Improving employee retention is in the best interest of every company. When you lose an employee you don’t just lose a teammate, you gain a whole set of new expenses. First, there’s the cost of advertising and interviewing for a position. Then, there’s the time and revenue lost as that person gets up to speed, taking other people away from their tasks. While salary, benefits, and leadership play a role in whether employees stick around for the long haul, engagement is also a factor. And that’s where videos can help.
Employee engagement has grown slowly over the past decade. Even so, less than 40% of employees are engaged, according to Gallup surveys. That’s a problem for employers because disengaged employees are more likely to call in sick, produce less, and bring in less profit. They’re more likely to leave because they don’t feel like a part of your team. By contrast, highly engaged employees are innovative, bring in higher profits, and are less likely to leave. If you want to improve employee retention, employee engagement is a good place to start.
Six Types of Video to Improve Employee Retention
Whether they’re HR videos or part of your change management strategy, videos can help improve employee retention in several ways. Consider creating videos in these six areas.
1. Onboarding Videos
It’s never too early to start thinking about employee retention. During onboarding, employees begin to understand your company culture and procedures. It is especially important for remote workers who might not work face-to-face with their team very often. Get this part right, and employees will feel engaged from the very beginning.
Onboarding videos can help you convey a lot of information in a short amount of time. They’re likely to hold employee attention better than a written handbook. Plus, onboarding videos can give the employee some virtual facetime with leaders in your organization without those leaders having to take chunks of time out of their day for every new hire. If you are doing in-person onboarding, video can help break up the session and give the new hire a chance to relax while still learning vital information.
2. Training Videos
Employees stay in their jobs longer when they feel confident that they have the knowledge and skills to do the work. That means training should be a vital part of your employee retention strategy. But a ton of boring content can actually decrease morale rather than improving it. Video can improve your training process in several ways. It can help break up long training sessions and free team members to focus on their work rather than spending that time training coworkers. Consider which important (or simply boring) topics might benefit from a high-quality video presentation.
Video can also help you scale your employee training. The time investment and resources are the same whether you’re training five people or 500. Most importantly, video makes training more accessible and convenient. Instead of taking a whole day to sit in a conference room or attend a seminar, employees can train when and where it’s convenient for them. That might be during a slow hour at the office or in the evening after their kids have gone to bed.
3. Career Development Videos
While training videos help your employees improve skills in a particular area, career development videos help guide their career progression. You can use them to explore different career pathways, expose employees to the work done by other departments, or help explain education and training benefits.
Career development videos can help employees understand what they need to do to succeed within your organization. When employees see there’s room to grow with your company, they’re much more likely to stick around.
In the video below Electronic Arts maps a five-stage career development process that any employee can follow to reach their professional goals.
4. News Updates and Employee Recognition Videos
Helping employees feel connected also helps keep them engaged. Video can come in handy here by spreading the word about new products, services, projects, and hires. If done well, a video presentation from the CEO or other leader can bring the team together.
While busy employees might ignore or skim an email, they’re likely to at least click on a video and get some exposure to the news you want to share. Unlike in-person announcements, videos are available anytime the employee has a free moment to watch.
You can also give employees a boost of confidence by sharing their achievements with the team through video. As a bonus, you can also post news updates and employee recognition videos to your social media channels or include them in emails to customers.
5. Change Management Videos
Change can be a touchy subject for many employees. It’s especially challenging if they don’t understand why the change is being made. Mergers and acquisitions, new processes or guidelines, or even a switch to new software can feel threatening if employees don’t understand the logic behind the change. Even when the alteration makes sense, they might still worry about how it will affect their role.
In the video below, Tenneco explains how their new AEGIS tool creates a safer and healthier work environment for their employees.
Change management videos can help you quickly and clearly explain organizational changes to employees. Consider a short series that looks something like this:
- Video 1: Introduce the change
- Video 2: Explain the rationale behind it
- Video 3: Describe how this change will affect employees
If you’re introducing new systems or processes, you might add tutorial videos or walkthroughs.
6. Cultural Alignment
The culture of an organization is difficult to pin down and even harder to change. Regular interactions with leadership and long-time employees can help keep everyone aligned. Videos can help too. A short, engaging video can remind employees of what the company stands for and why. By framing culture videos as stories, you invite employees to envision themselves as the heroes of the tale.
An effective cultural alignment video isn’t preachy or judgmental. Instead, it reminds the employee that they’re a part of a broader mission. For example, IdeaRocket made a video for a major telecommunications company that intercut animation with live footage of an employee talking about how they lived the company’s tenets in their job everyday. That is just one of the ways you can help employees connect the dots between the mission and their role.
How to Craft Employee Retention Videos
Do you need to create video specifically for employees? Yes and no. Training, onboarding, and change management videos should probably be made from scratch for your team. But news updates and company culture videos can be shared with both employees and customers.
- Include brand colors and logos wherever it makes sense to do so. This helps cement your brand image in your employees’ minds. If you have a mascot or spokesperson, feature them. And make sure the tone of your video matches your brand voice.
- Communicate the company culture. Consistency of communication is equally important whether you’re talking to employees or customers.
- Feature leadership and employees wherever possible. This is especially important if your team works remotely. Seeing the faces of the people they’re working with and for can help employees feel more connected.
- Use animation to explain complex processes or systems. Animation is the ideal tool to break down complex concepts or walk employees through processes. It can also help them look under the hood to better understand how a tool or product works so they can describe it to customers.
- Keep videos short and to the point. The ideal length for a marketing video is 2 minutes or less. You have more wiggle room for employee videos, but you should still respect their time, especially if they’re watching online. Event videos have a little more leeway since you have a captive audience.
In short, your video can make your efforts to improve employee retention a little less strenuous. For help creating employee retention videos that engage, contact the video experts at IdeaRocket.
